(AP Photo/John Raoux, File) Florida Governor Rick Scott speaks at a Republican rally in Orlando on September 6, 2018. F lorida Governor Rick Scott has a Donald Trump problem. Scott is one of a handful of Republican Senate candidates in states with large Hispanic populations working to keep an arm’s-length relationship with the president. While Trump continues to enjoy strong support within the GOP base, his approval ratings remain underwater among Hispanic voters, who made up 18 percent of Florida’s electorate in 2016. The distancing effort is a sudden turnabout for Scott, who was one of Trump’s earliest and most dedicated supporters. Scott endorsed Trump the day after he won the Republican primary in the Sunshine State. The Florida governor also fundraised for Trump, led a pro-Trump super PAC, and even hosted an inaugural party after the New York businessman’s surprise victory in 2016. But the public relationship between the two has grown cold over the past months. The president’s...

(Photo by Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/Sipa via AP Images) Republicans wave to President Trump at an event to celebrate the passage of the 2017 Republican Tax Act on the South Lawn of the White Hosue on December 20, 2017. trickle-downers.jpg T he $1.5 trillion tax cut signed into law last December by President Trump is not only widening the economic gap between the rich and everyone else, but also between white Americans and people of color. That’s according to a new, first-of-its-kind analysis of the 2017 Republican Tax Act by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and Prosperity Now, a nonprofit advocacy group for low-income households. Using an economic model created by ITEP, the report drills down on the racial implications of the Republicans’ handiwork. The report’s authors found that racial inequities are a feature of the tax law, not a bug—Trump’s tax cuts champion Americans with existing wealth over those struggling to create new wealth. Of the $275 billion in...

The Trump administration's treatment of migrant children as potential criminals has meant lengthy incarcerations for thousands—and an unwelcome shift in mission for the government's children welfare specialists.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Casa Padre in Brownsville, Texas, is the largest child immigrant detention center in the U.S., housing youths aged 10 to 17. This article appears in the Fall 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . A child in detention tries to keep from dreaming of the outside world. Afuera . Outside. That place where kids his age are busy jumping in pools under the summer sun or laughing in air-conditioned movie theaters; the kinds of things he used to do with his mother and his sisters before they were separated, and that he hopes to do again once he’s released. But for the moment, afuera feels far off to Martín, who is still a teenager. And while dreaming of freedom provides a temporary escape from the loneliness of confinement, it can also be painful. Just as the shelter monitors circumscribe his actions, so too must Martín police his own thoughts. “In the shelter, it doesn’t feel good thinking about being outside,” says Martín...

(Shutterstock) trickle-downers.jpg W ashington, D.C., lawmakers voted 8 to 5 on Tuesday to repeal a voter-passed ballot measure known as Initiative 77—the will of their constituents be damned. Initiative 77, which received 55 percent of the vote in the June primary election, would have gradually raised the minimum wage for tipped workers in the District, starting with a modest increase on October 9, eventually reaching parity with the city’s minimum wage in 2026. Currently, employers are allowed to pay tipped workers less than the District’s $13.25 minimum wage, so long as their tips make up the difference. The council’s vote snuffed out, at least temporarily, what had become a major flashpoint in local politics, one that pitted restaurant owners, restaurant lobbying groups, and high-earning servers and bartenders against worker-advocacy organizations and lower-earning tipped workers. In a 16-hour public hearing in September, opponents of Initiative 77 warned that the measure would...

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File Eighteen-year-old Dunia Bueso, center, and her relative, Augustin Vargas, left, look at Bueso's one-year-old son, Joshua Tinoco, foreground, sitting on the lap of Martina Perez, at their home in Los Angeles. Of the three, only Bueso has been issued a green card. trickle-downers_54.jpg T he Trump administration is weaponizing food stamps, family financial assistance, and other public benefits to make good on its promise to drive poor immigrants out of the country. On September 22, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a preliminary version of a draft regulation that would give the federal government broader authority to deny green-cards to people who could become “public charges,” that is, dependent on welfare programs. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement that the change aims to promote “immigrant self-sufficiency and protect finite resources by ensuring that they are not likely to become burdens on American taxpayers.” But a...